tired and full of dread

[flea]

I've had a (short, but starting to feel like long) run of bad sleep nights - The Frat Boys Next Door had a party on Thursday night, and then over the weekend the baby's sleep went all to hell again. He's refusing to sleep in the crib (screaming, rolling all over the place) and waking up 3-4 times in the night wanting to nurse (every 2-3 hours). I can live with waking evey 3-4 hours and 2 wakes between bedtime and 5 am, but not 3. Last night he was awake continously between 1:30 and 2:30.

I'm considering looking for some 'gripe water' as I think maybe some of this is tummy discomfort at the addition of solids (certainly the great poop festival of 2007 would indicate the changes happening in the digestive tract are not always happy ones.) Has anyone used gripe water a) at all and b) for a baby past the tradiditional colic age? Maybe I should back off on the solids completely?

mr. flea said "maybe it's time to Ferberize" this morning, but I don't think it would necessarily work very well. When I tried to put him to bed in the crib last night, I wasn't getting "settle to sleep" fuss noises, but rather full-out "I hate this" screaming. Me standing there patting him didn't help - only actual removal from the crib.

I so don't want to go down this road again. Yet, here we go.

Comments

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

I don't remember how much I wrote about it, but constipation was a costant problem with Ellie from her 3rd day of solid food until she was about 11 months. I ended up holding off on solids until about 7 months and then giving her pears every day. (She liked pears and they were way less gross than prunes.) I haven't heard of gripe water - is it more for stomach pain?

You just mention stomach pain, so I'm not sure if this is helpful info or not. I'm not saying they had the same problem as much as offering my 2 cents that, in our case, holding off for a few more weeks greatly reduced our stomach/digestion problems.

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I have no advice on sleep issues. Totally unqualified here.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Like I'm qualified? I swear, they are so from an alien planet, children.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Andy was told yesterday by his mother that we are retarding Squeaky's development by not making him cry himself to sleep alone in his crib. ::sigh::

At his four month check-up, he was the median length for ten month-olds (that would be a bit over 29 inches long). Suddenly his ravenous nights make a lot more sense -- he sprouted from the 75th percentile at birth to off-the-chart at age 4 mo., and his weight hasn't even begun to catch up to his length yet.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

My god, that's hugely tall. My son has a 6'6" father and a 5'11" mother and was only 25.5 inches at 4 months.

Andy's mother must be related to my mother, who has said this consistently since Casper was about 3 months old. And my mother was a crunchy granola-y mother, for her day.

[haphazardmethod.livejournal.com]

Your instincts are good -- trust them.